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GNOME Twitch was updated to version 0.2.0 recently, adding a much needed chat feature, along with various user interface improvements and bug fixes.

In case you're not familiar with Twitch.tv, this is a popular live streaming video platform that primarily focuses on video gaming. GNOME Twitch lets you play Twitch streams without Flash, browse games and channel lists, add favorite channels and change the video quality.

The latest GNOME Twitch 0.2.0 brings support for chat. To be able to see and/or join the conversation, you'll need to log in to Twitch from the GNOME Twitch preferences.

For now, logging in to Twitch only allows using the chat feature (and it's not possible to view the chat without logging in, but this should be fixed in a future release), while other features, like receiving notifications when a stream goes live, subscribing or following streams, and so on, are not yet supported.

An alternative to get notifications when the channels you follow go live is Twitch.tv Indicator.

You can add streams to your favorites in the app, even without logging in to Twitch though.

The chat implementation in GNOME Twitch supports displaying Twitch emotes, including subscriber, turbo, etc. badges, allows using a dark or light background and to set its opacity, width and height as well as to hide the chat.

Right now, the chat doesn't display the user list and links in chat are not clickable, but that's on the todo list.

I should also add that after logging in to Twitch, you need to restart GNOME Twitch to be able to use the chat feature.

Note that GNOME Twitch uses header bars (client-side decorations), so it will look out of place in Ubuntu (with Unity), at least with the default Ambiance theme (it looks ok with other themes, such as Numix or Greybird). Header bars were fixed in Ubuntu 16.04, but not for all applications and GNOME Twitch is of them (here's a screenshot in Ubuntu 16.04 with Ambiance theme).

According to the release notes, GNOME Twitch is still very much a work in progress and there are quite a few planned features, including support for followed streams, recording and taking stream screenshots, as well as using different player backends, such as mpv (this is partially implemented) and VLC.

Install GNOME Twitch in Ubuntu

The official GNOME Twitch PPA was discontinued because the application is now available in the official Ubuntu (and Debian) 16.04 repositories, though it's an older version (0.1.0). Getdeb provides GNOME Twitch too, but it wasn't updated to version 0.2.0 at the time I'm writing this article.

Because of this, I decided to upload the latest GNOME Twitch 0.2.0 to the main WebUpd8 PPA (using its official Debian packaging, with modifications for the latest release), for Ubuntu 15.10 and 16.04.

The application doesn't work in Ubuntu versions older than 15.10 because it requires GTK 3.16 or newer, which is not available by default in Ubuntu 15.04 or 14.04.

To add the main WebUpd8 PPA and install GNOME Twitch in Ubuntu 16.04 or 15.10 (and derivatives), use the following commands: